The Penn Ghost Project

Wait, so let's have a crack at understanding your logic here. You post something assuming someone will find it interesting (let's ignore the fact that your posts always contain something you imagine will support your POV). Then, when someone comments that they do not find it interesting, you object and say they should shut up, right? So you only want responses which agree with your assessment that the content is interesting - in other words, you only want to hear from people who agree with you?

Do you know know the definition of the word "absurd"?  

Do you know know the definition of the word "absurd"?  

Perhaps you can point out the absurd for me. To recap the salient points:

 I posted this because someone just may find it interesting.

 Sorry but how belief in ghosts affects real estate prices is not even close to interesting for me.

 I'm sincerely curious why you keep setting up threads about phenomena which you don't accept there is any evidence for ?

When I see a topic and I see a lot (some by written by both of you) I have no interest in do you know what I do?  I keep my mouth shut ... I wonder if either of you can demonstrate the same restraint?

Seems to me to reflect what I summarised so what is it that is absurd? Or should I shut up?

Actually, I'll do just that. This is all pretty silly.

For years I used to take the mick out of my ex partner for having an interest in ghosts, nothing serious, just watching and reading about them, I thought it was all hogwash. Then I had my ‘hypnopompic’ hallucination in 2007, which was somewhat unsettling, but I put it down to a thought-form type hallucination, where a dream had somehow intruded on reality, as I was waking up.

Without telling me, my ex did a load of historical investigation into what I recalled seeing, and that research changed my mind somewhat. I then did more of my own research. I also started looking into other famous cases of apparitions, and finally decided it was sound enough to incorporate my experience, with my other anomalous childhood out-of-body experience. Since then, I decided to look at near death OBE's too, and have gone much much further in my personal research.

Nowdays I can't think of apparitional-type experiences in the same naive way I used to. The overwhelming majority of the stories I hear, I tend to dismiss... but there are a few gems in amongst them.

Celia Green and Charles McCreery did a great factual study on ghosts, published in their book "Apparitions". In their conclusion, they suggest that when people see an apparition, not only is the figure of the apparition hallucinatory, but the rest of the percipient's environment as well.

Celia's ideas really did make sense to me, and lead me down a new route looking at perception, although I've moved on now, it really helped to set me on a course where I could let go of naive childhood ideas of direct perception. My ideas are more nuanced now... but the general idea remains that people seem able to gain access to information anomalously, information that has been somehow dislocated from the way we normally expect to obtain information.

I reckon we go about our daily lives, completely oblivious that 100% of our experiences are obtained through the same mechanisms that anomalous apparitional-type experiences are gained. Just occasionally, the information contained in an unexpected dislocation is sufficiently far away from what one is expecting, that it stands out as being anomalous.

It certainly seems to me, that my experiences are the result of processing information... that is accessing information, altering it, and then storing it again... and that this information is shared.

It seems pretty clear to me now, that information is probably not stored quite the way we think it is. Our way of understanding nature certainly works, because it explains most of the things we experience. It's just the odd experience or two, or the odd scientific experiment that captures an effect that suggests something may be wrong about how we understand nature. Nothing that really affects our observations, and certainly nothing yet strong enough that we can replace our current understanding with something even more accurate, but we obviously are heading towards a new generalization and simplification of our theories.

Although that's an interesting post, Max I don't think it fits with what most believers in "ghosts" think is going on.

Sometimes I post something that may be interesting to someone, believe it or not. Trust me I'm not posting this for your edification or Kar's or to irritate (you two). When I see a topic and I see a lot (some by written by both of you) I have no interest in do you know what I do?  I keep my mouth shut as I feel no obligation or compulsion to make a comment of any sort.  I wonder if either of you can demonstrate the same restraint? Hope springs eternal.

"Sometimes I post something that may be interesting to someone, believe it or not"

Yes, I can believe that

"When I see a topic and I see a lot (some by written by both of you) I have no interest in do you know what I do?  I keep my mouth shut"

That's your choice of course.

I wonder if either of you can demonstrate the same restraint? Hope springs eternal.

I was just curious why you would be interested in "ghosts" when you don't accept there is any evidence for them.

It's not as if after 10 years or so of being exposed to the data, you've revised your beliefs any. On the contrary, you haven't moved an inch and neither has Malf or Paul.

You've waved away the testimony of the people who've had them (experiences), people who've studied them, people who've witnessed them, even reports from world renowned surgeons who've spelt it out for you that one of their patients was floating around the operating room while he was dead (Malf's explanation for that was the dumbest I've ever heard)

Celia Green and Charles McCreery did a great factual study on ghosts, published in their book "Apparitions". In their conclusion, they suggest that when people see an apparition, not only is the figure of the apparition hallucinatory, but the rest of the percipient's environment as well...I reckon we go about our daily lives, completely oblivious that 100% of our experiences are obtained through the same mechanisms that anomalous apparitional-type experiences are gained. Just occasionally, the information contained in an unexpected dislocation is sufficiently far away from what one is expecting, that it stands out as being anomalous.

It certainly seems to me, that my experiences are the result of processing information... that is accessing information, altering it, and then storing it again... and that this information is shared. It seems pretty clear to me now, that information is probably not stored quite the way we think it is. Our way of understanding nature certainly works, because it explains most of the things we experience. It's just the odd experience or two, or the odd scientific experiment that captures an effect that suggests something may be wrong about how we understand nature. Nothing that really affects our observations, and certainly nothing yet strong enough that we can replace our current understanding with something even more accurate, but we obviously are heading towards a new generalization and simplification of our theories.

So close,so very close.

[Pollux]

Have you ever had any direct experiences with ghosts?

Yes, many of our members have. I think almost 100 percent of them are very skeptical about their own minds—even though they probably were hallucinations or probably related to what they ate that day.

Penn Ghost Project

LOL, what a f***in load of bollox!